Bachelorette a Walk on the Wild Side

If there’s one valuable lesson to be learned in life, it’s that best friends can sometimes be your worst enemies even if they’re your BFFs.

Such is the fundamental premise of Leslye Headland’s freshman offering “Bachelorette” which is based on her well-received play of the same name.

Portly Becky (Rebel Wilson) is all set to marry the handsome but immemorable Dale and it’s up to feisty careerist Regan (Kirsten Dunst) to handle the maid of dishonor duties starting with four-alarm phone calls to high school buddies Gena (Lizzy Caplan), a smart-ass, sarcastic bohemian and Katie (Isla Fisher) a ditzy party girl.

Becky and Regan form the core of the clique but it’s only because BFF in their case means Bulimic Friends Forever.

2012 Gary Sanchez Productions, BCDF Pictures, Weinstein Company, RADiUS-TWC

Even after Becky finds out that a wasted Regan and Katie destroyed her wedding dress by trying to squeeze into it for a Facebookesque photo op, Becky can only reminisce about the times she and Regan spent in high school puking up lunch in the girls’ room.

Much raunchier than kindred chick flicks like “Bridesmaids” or anything starring Jennifer Aniston, one could probably say with fair accuracy that “Bachelorette” is more like a raunchier version of “Sex in the City” meets “The Hangover.”

The “Sex in the City” similarities go right down the principals sporting the same hair color too–two blondes, a redhead and a brunette.

Headland, better known as a TV and screen writer of the soon-to-be-released “About Last Night” and “Terriers,” a 20th Century Fox Television and FX Network co-production, pulls out all the stops in the one-liner department.

As the girls frantically search for tailor to repair Becky’s dress, Headland lets loose with zinger after zinger in a script that is tight and punchy―as in punch to the gut.

Casually relaxed pronouncements using the C-word and B-word are peppered throughout the tight 90-minute romp.

A perpetually tooted-up Gena lets her cell phone go to voicemail with a greeting that prompts the caller to “Eat a d**k.”

Katie overindulges at the reception and gradually spirals into a drug-and-drink-induced stupor.

“I don’t know what to do around people I really like, either sleep with them or get really drunk,” she relates.

After Katie overdoses on Xanax paramedics are called.

And with only minutes to spare before the wedding and no wedding dress in sight, a frazzled Regan chastises an inflexible wedding planner who notes that the cascade of mishaps aren’t on the itinerary.

“Providing a fucked up b*tch wasn’t on the itinerary either,” Regan snaps.”It’s Manhattan on Saturday ―five minutes is like 30 minutes.”

With a goofy wedding band and an eclectic soundtrack borrowing from the classics, 80s and 90s, “Bachelorette” is blisteringly uneven in parts but in a wickedly entertaining way if you can look past the vulgar language and cancer and bulimia references.—Steve Santiago

Artist entertains but Chaplin it’s not

Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo star in "The Artist," 2011, The Weinstein Company

When I first saw “The Artist,” I couldn’t quite make out whether this film was a gimmicky effort made to appeal to a niche segment of cinephiles or a finely crafted homage to the silent era.

Directed by the relatively unknown Michel Hazanavicius, “Artist” (2011) has garnered glowing critical review including three Oscar nominations for Hazanavicius: best director, best original screenplay and best editing.

Despite that, “Artist” is still not in the same league as its cinematic ancestors: “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928), “The Battleship Potemkin” (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925), “Greed” (Erich von Stroheim, 1924), “The General” (Buster Keaton, 1926) and “Metropolis” (Fritz Lang, 1927) are just a handful of films from that era that should, at the very least, receive a special screening by the academy prior to handing out any statuette for “Artist.”

But with its legions of gushing critical followers, that seems unlikely to happen.

In any event, “Artist” opens with a screening of George Valentin’s (Jean Dujardin) latest silent picture “The Russian Affair” during which aside from him being tortured by a Frankenstein-like electrical device, not much else happens.

But after the screening, a starstruck fan, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo),  accidently inserts herself into media frenzy outside the theater and is photographed planting one on Valentin’s face.

When his wife Doris (Penelope Ann Miller) sees the photo on the front page of Variety the next day, she is none too amused by both Valentin and his kooky Jack Russell Terrier, Uggie, who is trained to mimic Valentin’s pantomime.

The Weinstein Company, La Petite Reine, Studio 37

Meanwhile, Peppy Miller is ecstatic at having been photographed by Variety and decides to go on an audition at Kinograph Studios.

While waiting for her audition, she shows a butler (a bored Malcolm McDowell) the magazine cover and is dejected when he still doesn’t recognize her.

After earning a role and receiving a nod of approval from the casting director, Peppy celebrates with a Tiger Woods-like fist pump.

She then turns to a still seated McDowell and says “My name is Peppy Miller” to which McDowell wryly smiles and shrugs it off.

The Weinstein Company, La Petite Reine, Studio 37

Valentin later suggests Peppy paint a fake mole above her upper lip to attract more attention and miraculously she starts commanding better roles.

As time rolls on to 1929, sound technology comes into being and Valentin’s relationship with Doris

becomes more mundane and strained.

On top of that, Studio head Zimmer (John Goodman) screens one of the first rushes employing sound and Valentin laughs it off  as a joke.

“If that’s the future, you can have it,” he sniffs (perhaps echoing the same criticism Walt Disney received when he first proposed producing animated feature-length films).

Not surprisingly, Valentin inexplicably wakes up to an entire world using the new technology of sound only he is unable to speak, still silent and still holding on the a bygone era.

It turns out to be a Buñuelian dream from which Valentin awakens sweating and clearly disturbed― so much so that the normally outgoing actor becomes introspective on the ride to the studio at which he discovers that most of the silent actors and stage hands are gone.

Kinograph Studios has decided to halt production of silent films in favor of talkies.

“You and I belong to another era, George. The world is talking now,” Zimmerman tells a stunned Valentin.

In a matter of hours, Valentin discovers that he has gone from yesterdays box office idol to today’s washed up actor―it wasn’t possible back then to hang on for dear life by coining boorish phrases like “winning.”

Meanwhile though, Peppy Miller is winning having signed a deal with the newly reinvented Kinograph Studios.

She still believes in Valentin and eventually helps resurrect his career but only after Valentin makes one more desperate attempt at producing and acting in his own silent film which fails miserably.

The Weinstein Company 

“Artist” is an entertaining, well made and aptly researched and edited piece but the effusion of positive critique of it as something new rather than novel is puzzling and makes one wonder whether or not some critics are really familiar with the silent film canon.

Still, in addition to the categories for which it is nominated, “Artist” should probably also be nominated for best costume design, best cinematography and music score.

Everything is period correct even down to interior light switches and poster fonts.

Under ideal circumstances, there should probably be more of a push to restore original silent films and screen them at modern theaters but as they say, “every dog has its day” and if there were such a thing as an Oscar for dogs, Uggie would certainly earn my vote.―Steve Santiago

 

Panic in the streets

"A Town Called Panic" 2009, La Parti Production, Made in Productions, Mélusine Productions, Beast Productions, Gebeka Films,

The past few years have witnessed a resurgence of decent stop-motion animated films that are slowly but surely reintroducing the genre to audiences who may recall classics like Art Clokey’s “Gumby” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” but not much else.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the iconic “Gumby” (which for decades provided hung-over college students with fodder for papers on pop culture) and “Rudolph” (really an early PSA on dealing with bullies and marginalization) but they both needed a dusting off.

Enter “Panique au Village” or “A Town Called Panic,” an out-of-competition selection screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Directed and animated by the Belgian team of Stéphane Aubier  and Vincent Patar, the labor-intensive, French-language film clocks in at 76 minutes and utilized over 1,500 plastic toy figures over a 260-day production period.

The plot of “Panic” is relatively simple yet refreshingly twisted:

Cowboy (Coboy) and Indian (Indien) realize they forgot fellow roommate Horse’s (Cheval) birthday, so instead of buying a practical gift like a saddle, they decide to build him a barbeque grill from scratch.

When the Bert-and-Ernie-like roommates attempt to order the bricks online, they leave a coffee cup on top of the keyboard zero key and mistakenly order 50 million bricks instead of the 50 bricks the project requires.

Thus, the panic ensues—a chain of events that can only simultaneously be called absurdly surreal and knee-slapping funny.

Cowboy and Indian complete the barbeque in time to celebrate Horse’s birthday but can’t figure out what to do with the rest of the bricks so thinking Horse won’t notice, they stack the bricks on top of the house– which of course results in the whole place collapsing.

Each day they rebuild the house and each night the walls are stolen by mischievous aquatic creatures called Atlanteans who occupy a parallel universe inside a pond owned by a perpetually agitated farmer named Steven.

When the trio discover the Atlanteans stealing the walls of their house, a chase ensues during which the three heroes get chased by an angry bear, fall down a hole to the center of the earth, get trapped inside a giant snowball-throwing penguin and eventually confront the thieving sea creatures but not before escaping a school of angry barracudas.

Rounding out the frantic village people are : Jeanine (Steven’s wife), Policeman, Madame Longray (a music teacher and Horse’s love interest) and an assortment of barnyard animals.

“Panic” was originally developed as a 20-episode series for French and Belgian television in 2003 but the idea of using animated, cheap plastic toys first came to the creators during the 1980s when the directors were art students in Belgium.

By employing a frenetic, Gumbyesque editing style and what the creators describe as character vocalizations “filled with laughing gas,” “Panic” evokes a filmic quality more commonly associated with auteurs like Luis Buñel and Jean Cocteau yet it is stylistically 21st century.

And although the TV series enjoys a cult following in Europe, Shrekkies and Pixar followers across the pond may not warm up to a film like “Panic” simply because there simply is a lot crazy stuff going that does not employ a linear narrative but then again that’s where the real beauty (and fun) of this film actually lies. —Steve Santiago